Alcatel-Lucent sees India 4G deployment in 2011

SEOUL, S.KOREA: Telecom gear maker Alcatel-Lucent said on Wednesday that it is expecting India to deploy 4G networks as early as the second quarter of next year, and it is aggressively pursuing deals with Indian operators.

"What's coming next is 4G. A number of operators are actively planning deployment of 4G LTE networks in the beginning of next year in India. We are very aggressively pursuing those conversations," Rajeev Singh-Molares, president of Asia Pacific and executive vice president of Alcatel-Lucent, told Reuters.

The company also expects its revenue to grow further in the fourth quarter from the third quarter, when it posted its first sales rise in 10 quarters as demand started to recover outside North America on strong data traffic growth.

He also said the U.S. market has a lot of growth potential because of data explosion coming from smartphones and tablet PCs.